Unseen

Chapter 6

"For our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:29)

Xale huffed and puffed up the hill.  He was walking/running to Ashim's house for a sleepover. Xale had packed all of his "ninja weapons" in his duffle bag to show Ashim, but unfortunately, most of his weapons were very, very, very heavy.

"Why- huff puff- is- huff puff- Ashim's house- huff puff- on top of a hill?!!!"

Xale finally made it up the hill and up to Ashim's house.  He rang the doorbell and stopped to catch his breath.

Ashim opened the door, "Hey Xa-"

"Dude!" Xale flung his bag at Ashim's feet.  "Why is your house on a SUPER high hill?!"

"I don't know," Ashim shrugged.  "When I was adopted, Jake and Paulina already lived here."

Jake and Paulina adopted Ashim when he was 8 years old.  Jake was a pastor, and Paulina taught the Kindergarteners at Ashim's school.

"Say, where are your parents?" Xale asked.

"Jake's at church, Paulina's at the grocery store."  Ashim picked up Xale's duffle bag from the ground.  "Xale!" he exclaimed.  "What is in your bag? Rocks?"

"Oh yeah, I brought my ninja weapons," Xale beamed.

"Ninja weapons?"

"Yeah, I'll show you!"

The boys lugged Xale's bag upstairs and into Ashim's room.

Xale opened the bag and a baby teething toy rolled out.

"This is a ninja weapon?" Ashim asked.

"Oh that's probably Coral's," Xale stuffed the toy back into his bag.

"Your family driving you crazy again?"

"Yes!" Xale exclaimed.  "I can't even pack or leave the house safely!"  

He folded his arms, thinking back to the torture he had gone through earlier that day.  "Ryan had soccer practice and he's ALWAYS blaming me for taking his cleats or whatever, and Claude was running around pretending he was Superman, and Amelia was playing that swan ballet music on rerun in the living room."  

Xale sighed.  "And then Coral wandered into my bedroom-"

"You mean yours and Ryan's bedroom," Ashim interrupted.

"Well yeah, and she started messing with my weapons!"  

"You call these weapons?" Ashim teased, pulling out several "weapons" from Xale's bag; a spiky bow, nunchucks, ninja stars, some sort of Nerf gun, fingerless gloves, and a weird set of gauntlets.

"Okaaaaaay...." Ashim studied the strange collection of objects.  "What are those?" he asked, pointing at the gauntlets.

"Those are my lava gauntlets," Xale picked them up and put them on.

"Lava???"

"Yep!  They don't work yet, I'm still working on it."

"How are they supposed to work?" Ashim asked warily.

"Well," Xale stood up.   "You put them on, and then you go like this!"  He thrust his hands out in front of him.

"And then?"

"Lava is supposed to come out somehow."

Ashim looked at Xale like he was nuts.

"It's still a work in progress."

"I'm confused.  What do you do again?"

"You go like this-"

Xale thrust out his hands... and fire burst out and flew across the room.

"AAAAAHHHH!" both of the boys yelled at the top of their lungs.

Xale had set the curtains on fire.

"FIRE!" Xale hollered.

The curtains were flaming, and the fire slowly crept up them.

Beeeeeeeeep!

"WHAT IS THAT?!" Xale shouted.

"It's the smoke detector Xale, stop yelling."

"HOW CAN I STOP?  THE HOUSE IS BURNING DOWN!"

"I'll go get the fire extinguisher!"  Ashim ran out of his room.

Pssssssssssssssssssst!

The sprinklers went off.  Ashim grabbed the fire extinguisher from the closet in the hallway and ran back into his room.

"The fire is out," Xale called.  Both of the boys were soaking wet.

Psssssssssssst!

"How do you turn the sprinklers off?" Xale asked.

"They'll turn off after a while," Ashim responded, and the sprinklers stopped.

Ashim walked over to the window and peered out.  "Thanks man."

"No problem dude," Xale joined him at the window.  "Sorry about... you know."

"It's okay, it's just the curtains."  Both of the boys were too stunned to say anything more.

"What's that?" Xale pointed at a dark, shadowy, figure in Ashim's backyard.  It was the same shadow Ashim had seen in the boy's bathroom at school.

"Since when did you start using creepy Halloween decorations?" Xale shuddered.

"We don't, that thing is real."  The boys looked at each other.

"That kind of reminds me of that shadow Kayta was telling us about."  Xale turned around to look at Ashim's bewildered face. "You know? In her nightmare?"

"I saw it at school! In the bathroom!"   

Xale looked back out the window, only to notice that the shadow had gone.

"Where'd it go?" Xale asked Ashim, who seemed to know a lot about the mysterious shadows.

"I don't know!  That's the thing.  After you see it, it disappears," Ashim replied.

"That is seriously freaky."  The shadow's red glowing eyes had sent shivers down Xale's back.

"Yeah, it really is," Ashim nodded.

The door opened downstairs, making them both jump.  

"Boys!  Pizza time!" Ashim's mother called from the floor below.

"Have you told anyone about it?" 

Ashim shook his head.

"Should we tell your mom?"

"No, I think we should keep it secret.  We don't want anybody worrying about us," Ashim said, as the two went downstairs to the dining room for dinner.